The World Trade Organization (WTO) is not about free trade. One doesn't
need a truck full of regulations to explain free trade. One simply knocks
down the barriers and allows commerce to take place. No protections for
those who venture into unknown and dangerous trade waters. No subsidies
for those who make bad deals. No regulations to make the playing field
"fair." Such risks come with real free trade. Consequently it
regulates itself. It's called a free market.

The WTO does the opposite. It creates the "rules of engagement"
for commerce between nations. It sets up elaborate environmental regulations
and tax incentives for those who want to play in a well-protected game.
The WTO stands as little more than a world regulator of the market.

So why the protests? And who were those rabble rousers? For the most
part, the demonstrators were radical environmentalists. They seek to use
the WTO as their own tool to inflict worldwide restrictions on industry
that will drive up costs and decrease production. Of course the regulations
they demand are based on the same fuzzy and flawed science that's driving
the global warming scare.

However, producing fifty thousand demonstrators takes a lot of coordination
and, well, money. Who's behind such a massive undertaking? And who funds
it? For at least part of the answer take a trip on the information superhighway
to a web page called ruckus.org. There you will find the culprits who
trained many of the demonstrators and helped plan much of the well-organized
street action. The Ruckus Society is connected to the nation's most radical
environmental terrorist group, Earth First.

The Ruckus Society has been training thousands to stir up trouble over
the past several years. To date, Ruckus alumni have tested their new disruption
techniques in small demonstrations in rural areas of the nation. Their
actions are usually directed toward logging companies and ranchers. There
is evidence that Ruckus-trained terrorists were responsible for the 1997
attack on the district offices of former Congressman Frank Riggs when
a gang of Earth First'ers swarmed into the office carrying a 400 pound
tree trunk which they chained themselves to in order to delay arrest.

It's about mass media and public images. One of the leaders of The Ruckus
Society is Mike Roselle, an Earth First radical and self-proclaimed revolutionary
who, in 1995, said of his radical environmentalism, "this is Jihad,
pal. There are no innocent bystanders, because in these desperate hours,
bystanders are not innocent. We'll broaden our theater of conflict."
By 1995, Roselle claimed to have trained over 1000 American and Canadian
youth to commit illegal acts through "civil disobedience."

Financial records of media mogul Ted Turner's "Turner Foundation"
show hundreds of thousands of dollars going into the coffers of Earth
First front groups which undoubtedly have made their way into the training
schools of The Ruckus Society, and consequently effected the streets of
Seattle. An article in the March 20, 1997 Missoula Independent, (a pro-Earth
First publication in Montana), Ted Turner is referred to as "Daddy
Greenbucks." The article quotes Mike Roselle giving credit to Turner
and his wife Jane Fonda for funding the Ruckus Society's Action Camps.

In 1994 and 1995, Turner gave $85,000 to the Rainforest Action Network,
one of the major players in the Seattle disturbances. Also in 1994, Turner
gave at least $20, 000 to The Ecology Center. Other Earth First related
groups receiving Turner funds include The Wildlands Project ($15,000),
Road Rip Road Removal Implementation Project ($3,000) Biodiversity Legal
Foundation ($5,000), Forest Guardians ($25,000), and at least 12 more
in 1994 alone. After 1995 The Turner Foundation stopped listing amount
of donations it gives.

Now that Ruckus has felt the great success of Seattle, where more than
fifty thousand of its brethren gathered and basked in the international
media limelight, look out. As we enter the new millennium, look for more
violent outbreaks in communities nationwide. Seattle was more than likely
the Ruckus graduation exercise for its radical training school. Graduates
will now fan out across the country and stir up "green" rabble
where ever possible.

Though the WTO stands as an international threat to American industry
and ranching, the immediate danger growing out of the WTO gathering in
Seattle is an energized radical environmental movement that now sees street
action as an immediate way to enforce policy that can't be won at the
ballot box. They see it as the sixties all over again. And they could
be right.

Tom DeWeese is president of the American Policy Center, a grassroots,
activist think thank headquartered in Herndon, Virginia. It maintains
an Internet site at americanpolicy.org.